Monday, July 22, 2013

Dear Friends, With what has been a very productive summer half over, my mind has begun to shift its attention to what lies ahead in the semester to come. Now typically any kind of anticipatory emotion for the upcoming year wouldn't be considered blogworthy material for me, so here's the explanation and big public announcement:

I'm going to be studying at Waseda University in Tokyo for a year!

The past year has admittedly been an exceptionally busy, exhausting, and frustrating experience, but it has all paid off. To answer the obvious question "Why Japan?", it has sort of always been a backburner dream of mine to spend a part of my life there. I've always felt very connected to my mother's homeland despite being raised exclusively in Thailand. In fact, 20 years and countless cultural collisions later, I've learned to embrace that I, Mika, will just never be fully Thai. And that's cool. In addition, I've also realized that despite my less than perfect mastery of all things Japanese, there has always been and will always be an inherently Japanese catch about me. And that's really cool.

For the lack of a better expression, I'm HELLA excited about the near future. Not only about being immersed in the environment (c'mon that's just too obvious) but, believe it or not, studying there. I'm honestly excited about the kind of dedicated learning culture I can expect from my professors and peers at Waseda. I feel a bit guilty for saying so, but it's been a while since I've been externally motivated. The second thing I'm absolutely stoked about is being new. Almost contradictory to my introverted personality, I've always enjoyed freshmen years more than the others. I feel like September 2013 - August 2014 is going to be just like another freshmen year for me. I may not be the most social person in the world, but I embrace adventures, invitations, and challenges. These things are HANDED to you when you're new. When you've been somewhere for so long (try 2 decades), it comes to the point that you have to make the efforts to FIND adventures, invitations, and challenges. Not saying that's bad or impossible, just often we lose the time and energy. Hey, we're not teenagers anymore.

The last thing I'm really looking forward to is finally getting to live on my own. I've been extremely blessed with loving and caring parents, and so I've been cursed with my relentless penchant for independence. I can't wait to move in to my own place, and then move in and out of it day after day according to my will. So that's what's up with me at this point in my life. Just wanted to give you all a head's up that I'll be blogging from a new base for a year, starting September. Please keep in touch or just keep reading my blog and not tell me that you are...